


Quietly Pass Me By

by womanaction



Series: Where Do We Go - S6 AU [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Companion Piece, F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 00:42:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11116329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/womanaction/pseuds/womanaction
Summary: Angel and Buffy talk. Sort of. Companion/missing scene to "Where Do We Go?", the first of at least two planned fill-in-the-blank scenes.





	Quietly Pass Me By

**Author's Note:**

> This will likely not make sense if you haven't read "Where Do We Go?". For those who have read it, this fills in the scene with Angel and Buffy in chapters 6-7.

“Do you love him?” Angel asks, not sure if he wants to hear the answer.

“No,” Buffy says plainly. The relief that floods him is immediate. He feels a little guilty wondering if part of it is selfish, if some part of him is still expecting… “But you’d have no right to come in and yell at me if I did.”

His hackles raise again. “He doesn’t have a soul,” he growls.

She looks away. “A soul?” she echoes. “I don’t even know if I have one of those, Angel. Maybe it got stuck in heaven while they pulled the rest of me out.”

_Heaven?_

God.

Of course.

Angel reaches a hand out to touch her, but she grabs his wrist. He’s forgotten somehow in all of his fuzzy memories of her how powerful she is, how deadly. Her eyes are burning as she stares him down and he has no idea how to respond. He wonders if this is how the first vampire to meet a Slayer felt. If vampires shivered, he would.

But god, she’s beautiful.

Carefully, he withdraws his hand. She allows it, watching him warily like a caged animal. Almost like the wild animal he was when he came back from hell, but now that he knows where she really was it casts her behavior in a whole new light. “Buffy,” he says placatingly. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, I’ve gotten a lot of that lately.”

“I can’t imagine how you must be suffering.” He searches her eyes for some trace of that vulnerable young woman he’d fallen in love with too few years ago, but she’s cold. Shut down. Shutting _him_ out, anyway. He wonders briefly if that explains this thing with Spike. He always did have a way of getting under people’s skin and breaking down their barriers. Angel’s fist clenches. _That bastard_. “But the others…they didn’t know. They care about you, Buffy. They just didn’t want you to suffer in hell, like…well, like I did.”

Cool steel turns to fire in an instant. “Oh, of course you’ve found a way to make this about yourself,” she hisses, and he suddenly finds himself not missing her more emotionally volatile side. The Slayer stalks away into the sunlight again, turning her back on him.

“That’s not what I meant,” he says under his breath. “Buffy – ”

“Why did you even come?” she asks suddenly, turning back around. He’s seen fledges with fewer mood swings.

“I came because I was worried about you.”

She raises her eyebrows. “You sound like my dad. Tell me the truth, you two have been talking behind my back, right? That whole skipping-town and coming back at the worst possible second…that’s straight from the fucking Hank Summers playbook.”

He cringes instinctively, although whether it’s from hearing her out-of-character language or the comparison to her father, he’s not sure.

If she’s trying to piss him off, it’s working. “Buffy,” he tries one last time, with as much tenderness as he can muster. “You have every right to be upset.”

“Thanks for the permission,” she says bitterly, and something inside Angel snaps.

“Okay, you know what, Buffy? You want me to be your dad, I’ll be your dad. You’re acting like a child, and I can’t help you.”

“You helped Faith all right.” Her green eyes narrow.

Somewhere in his mind, rational Angel cautions him against engaging any further, but he can’t stop himself. “Faith _wanted_ to be helped. You obviously don’t.”

“Wanted to be helped, sure.” She blows out some air and takes a few daring steps forward until they’re almost touching. “What did you do, Angel, bang the bad out of her?”

He looks at her, really looks at her, at this angry, broken woman in front of him. He doesn’t recognize her. “This isn’t you,” he says, so quietly that a normal human wouldn’t be able to hear him. She isn’t a normal human, of course, but she doesn’t have a smart response this time. A small crease appears between her brows and she seems to get a little smaller. “This isn’t who you _are_ , Buffy. And I’m going to help you.”

“Don’t.” Tears are starting to well up in her eyes, and he’s reminded irresistibly of the fight they’d had before her senior prom.

“It’s okay, Buffy. We’ll figure something out.” Slowly, like he’s charming something feral, he reaches out his hand.

“Don’t _touch_ me,” she almost shrieks, and hits him in the face with enough force to send a human flying. _Matching bruises from two angry blondes,_ he thinks regretfully.

Buffy freezes, eyes threatening to finally overflow, and he almost breathes a sigh of relief. A crying Buffy is better than an angry one or an empty one. Then he notices that she’s not looking at him, but behind him.

Before he can turn around to confirm his suspicions, she’s running in the opposite direction, and within another instant Spike is tearing after her, a black-and-white blur.

“So I’m guessing the reunion didn’t go too well?” Xander says dryly.

Angel tries not to fantasize about ripping the boy’s head off.


End file.
